Introduction
For the last few years, I’ve been blogging about the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target and its many uses related to Windows Server Failover Clustering, Hyper-V and other server scenarios. Today, Microsoft has made this software publicly...

I recently got a stream of e-mails and questions about the maximum number of cluster nodes you can have in a Scale-Out File Server cluster. For the record, we test and support up to 8 nodes per file server cluster. This is the case for both Windows Server...

In this post, I'm providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012 that is related to the File Server, the SMB 3.0 features and its associated scenarios like Hyper-V over SMB and SQL Server over SMB. It's obviously not...

This post is a part of the nine-part “ What’s New in Windows Server & System Center 2012 R2 ” series that is featured on Brad Anderson’s In the Cloud blog. Today’s blog post covers Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage and how...

In this post, I'm providing a reference to the most relevant content related to Windows Server 2012 R2 that is related to the File Server, the SMB 3.02 features and its associated scenarios like Hyper-V over SMB and SQL Server over SMB. This is what...

P.P.S.: This previously unsupported scenario is now fine with Windows Server "8" Beta and SMB 2.2. See http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/03/06/windows-server-quot-8-quot-beta-test-cases-for-hyper-v-over-smb.aspx
P.S.: After writing...

Introduction
This blog post focus on the new SMB Scale-Out Rebalancing introduced in Windows Server 2012 R2. If you haven’t seen it yet, it delivers a new way of balancing file clients accessing a Scale-Out File Server.
In Windows Server...

1. Overview In this document, I am sharing all the steps I used to create a demo or test environment of a storage space with storage tiers on Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview so that you can experiment with some of the new technologies yourself. You need...

1. Introduction Windows Server 2012 includes a new feature called SMB Multichannel, part of the SMB 3.0 protocol, which increases the network performance and availability for File Servers. 1.1. Benefits SMB Multichannel allows file servers to use...

Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 is also now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers for evaluation. This means subscribers can now use the Microsoft iSCSI Target 3.3 for Development, Test and all other non-production purposes. Find below the information from the MSDN/TechNet site where you download the bits.

Introduction
Maybe you’re lucky enough to work for a company that has standardized on SharePoint portals and ASP.NET applications across the board. In that case, you do not need to integrate different types of portals and web applications. For most...

This blog post is now obsolete. For the latest post on this topic, visit http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/07/31/deploying-windows-server-2012-with-smb-direct-smb-over-rdma-and-the-mellanox-connectx-2-connectx-3-using-infiniband-step-by...

This post is a part of the nine-part “ What’s New in Windows Server & System Center 2012 R2 ” series that is featured on Brad Anderson’s In the Cloud blog. Today’s blog post covers Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage and how...

Back in 2001, I worked for a 300-employee company in Palo Alto as their Systems Engineer and one of the things that gave me the most headaches was backups. We had Windows Server across the board, but the backup application was from a third party, which...

P.P.S.: This previously unsupported scenario is now fine with Windows Server "8" Beta and SMB 2.2. See http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/03/06/windows-server-quot-8-quot-beta-test-cases-for-hyper-v-over-smb.aspx
P.S.: After writing...

When deploying Hyper-V over SMB (storing your live configuration and live VHD/VHDX files on an SMB 3.0 file share), make sure you don’t use a loopback configuration. A loopback configuration means that the Hyper-V role and the File Server role are on...

IMPORTANT NOTE: This blog post was created before the release of Windows Server 2012, which introduced SMB 3.0 and the new SMB Multichannel feature and significantly improved SMB's ability to use multiple network interfaces. You can read more about...

Note: This blog post is obsolete. Please find the updated version at http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2013/10/02/windows-server-2012-r2-which-version-of-the-smb-protocol-smb-1-0-smb-2-0-smb-2-1-smb-3-0-or-smb-3-02-you-are-using.aspx
...

IMPORTANT: This blog post is now obsolete. For the latest version of this content, please visit: http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/08/23/windows-server-2012-scale-out-file-server-for-sql-server-2012-step-by-step-installation.aspx
...

Note: This blog post is a Windows Server 2012 R2 update on a previous version focused on Windows Server 2012 . 1. Introduction With the release of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, I am frequently asked about how older versions of Windows will behave...

This blog post is obsolete, since new versions of Windows Storage Server and the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target are now available on MSDN and Technet. For details on new releases, check http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2010/09/27/windows-storage...

Question from a user (paraphrased): When we access a local file via loopback UNC path, is this the same as accessing via the local path? I mean, is "C:\myfolder\a.txt" equal to " \\myserver\myshare\a.txt " or I'll be using TCP/IP in any way?
Answer...

1. Overview In this post, I am sharing all the steps I used to create a Windows Server 2012 File Server test environment that I used for some of my Hyper-V over SMB demonstrations. My goal with this post is to share some of configuration details and the...

SMB Signing is a feature through which communications using SMB can be digitally signed at the packet level. This post covers signing configuration, defaults and effective behavior for both SMB1 and SMB2.